My experience at Pagan Spirit Gathering 2014, Pt 5 of 9

Rain! Lots and lots of rain! Ten straight hours of rain! I think my booth may have been open a total of two hours that day, because I just couldn’t chance my paintings getting damaged. Sure, my cheapie shower curtains/zip ties/clothespins kept my booth exceedingly dry, but again, with Mercury retrograde going on, I was not about to leave things to chance. I worked too hard on them to get ruined.

And on top of it, the women’s shower house was closed for maintenance in the morning. Needless to say, I was getting a little on the grumpy side. Sure, I could have done what I needed to do at the men’s house, but again, Prudy McPrudeson does not do that. So, I decided to cheer myself up with doing a long sponge bath ala Witness but without Harrison Ford peeking around the corner. I had plenty of hot water thanks to my electric kettle, and there was enough left to work on my feet. In other words, I treated the experience like getting a nice pedicure! It’s just too bad I didn’t bring any nail polish.

The tarp that connected from my back canopy to my car wasn’t a perfect fit, so there was some pooling going on. I rigged up one of my candle holders on top of my roof rack which helped the water to move elsewhere. And the back canopy? That was a brand new one, and it wasn’t doing nearly as well as the old cheapie one I bought years ago for $20 at CVS. Go figure. That one was pooling too, and I figured out that by stuffing my open umbrella into the corner, it made the canopy just taught enough to redirect the water. I was very, very grateful I had bought that cedar mulch, that’s for sure.

There was so much rain in fact I lost two of the six pairs of shoes I brought due to straps snapping in the mud. And too, people laughed at me and even said I was nuts for wearing wedge heels to PSG. But with all that mud, I was gliding right through it without my feet getting nasty. And damn it, I looked good, too!

An unfortunate side effect to all of that rain was the cancellation of a lot of PSG favorites, including the candlelit labyrinth. We had a clear view of it, but we of course couldn’t see it at all. The young women who were completing their Rite of Passage into Womanhood walked it in the rain, with umbrellas, Wellies and flashlights – they were not about to let Nature rain on their parade.

I changed clothes four times that day. My little two-piece was replaced with jeans, boots, a long-sleeved shirt and a hoodie, and gradually the outfit changed. With my Media lanyard, I actually looked like I was dressed for vending/performing at a Metal fest than a Pagan one. At one point, I switched out the long-sleeve (I think it was a Suffocation shirt) to a t-shirt, which was from a Metal fest Ron and I worked years ago: Central Illinois Metalfest. It’s so funny that because of that shirt, I was met by a couple who are also into brutal death metal, and I only brought that shirt as something to sleep in. They’re a younger couple, the guy nearly the same age as our son, and we of course had lots to talk about. So I invited them over for dinner.

(These guys were pretty all right!)

A hot meal (linguine with homemade sauce), with candle light and lots of Christmas lights, kept us all plenty cozy while the rain kept coming down in buckets. We were comparing notes on all of the same people we know, as they live not too far from me, and all of the bands we get into. Who would have thought I would meet other people who actually get me in such a way? And yes, they liked my altar with Eddie prominently placed. (What?! You don’t know who Eddie is? You’re obviously not an Iron Maiden fan then.)

Lori Dake is a life-long native several generations back , is a mom to an adult son and married for over fifteen years. She is a leasing agent primarily serving the North Side and has also worked as a paralegal for several years. Sometimes, she’s a hardcore fashionista, and sometimes a concert shirt and jeans are more her style. Hobbies include painting while listening to 80’s metal, writing, participating in various forms of philanthropy and creating fabulous meals on a budget.